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Forbes Earnings Preview: BlackRock

Optimism surrounds BlackRock (BLK), as it gets ready to report its fourth quarter results on Thursday, January 17, 2013. Analysts are expecting the company to book a profit of $3.69 a share, up from $3.06 a year ago.

Over the past three months, the consensus estimate has increased from $3.63. Analysts are projecting earnings of $13.42 per share for the fiscal year. Revenue is projected to be $2.49 billion for the quarter, 9.5% above the year-earlier total of $2.27 billion. For the year, revenue is expected to come in at $9.28 billion.

A year-over-year revenue increase in the third quarter snapped a streak of three consecutive quarters of revenue declines. In the most recent quarter, revenue increased 11.5% year-over-year. Prior to that, revenue had been falling; it dropped 5.4% in the second quarter, 0.6% in the first quarter and 10.4% in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year.

While the company has been profitable for the last eight quarters, income has fallen year-over-year by an average of 4.4% over the past four quarters. The hardest-hit quarter was the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year, which brought a 15.5% drop.

The majority of analysts (58.8%) rate BlackRock as a buy. This compares favorably to the analyst ratings of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 51.6% buys. That rating hasn’t budged in three months as the average analyst rating of the stock has remained steady.

BlackRock provides investment management services to institutional clients and to individual investors through various investment vehicles One of BlackRock’s main competitors in the investment services industry is Franklin Resources (BEN). Other competitors in the financial sector include: Morgan Stanley (MS), T Rowe Price (TROW), and American International Group (AIG).

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